Luminous Night
by Tonya
Summary: Harry wondered how he ended up in these situations. (HL, one-shot)


Title: Luminous Night

Author: Tonya

Disclaimer: As usual. No own. No sue.

Pairing: Harry/Luna

Rating: G

Summary: Harry wondered how he ended up in these situations

A/N: Look, Ma! No Angst!

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Sometimes, Harry wondered how he ended up in these situations.

Like now. Sitting by the edge of the lake at dusk, holding a seemingly empty glass jar. He lifted the jar to his eyes again, peering inside for what had probably been the fifth time in the past ten minutes. As if the first four attempts would finally be negated by this turn, and the jar that had been empty before, would suddenly be filled with something actually visible to the human eye.

"Um, Luna, are you sure something is in here?" he asked carefully, still peering through the jar and seeing nothing but a distorted view of the horizon through the other side of the glass.

Luna sat beside him, and she peered into her own jar in response to his question. There was a moment of silence, and Harry glanced over at her. She studied the jar a moment longer before giving a nod of her head.

"I believe they are, yes."

Harry simply blinked at her. "Right." He gave his jar a shake, hoping to at least hear something rattle against the sides of the glass.

"I wouldn't do that, Harry," she said airily. "They really don't like to be jostled about. It's very disconcerting."

Harry glanced over at her again before holding the jar up again with a slight frown.

He had met Luna during his fifth year and had become somewhat acquaintances with her during the beginning of his sixth year. By the end of that year, he had considered her a good friend. And now in his seventh, she had become one of his best friends.

He'd long grown to overlook her oddities, accepting them as part of who she was. Part of what made her Luna. Sure, she believed in some of the oddest things at times, and sometimes, some of her theories and stories still had a tendency to throw him off for a moment. But he had learned during his sixth year that that wasn't all there was to know about her. She was incredibly smart, living up to the typical Ravenclaw stereotype. She'd even helped him a time or two on a Potions assignment when he had feared the lecture he would have received from Hermione if he had went to her with help on assignment that they had had weeks to finish. She was also incredibly pretty, and Harry could never figure out if that had been a physical change on her part or a mental change on his. And somehow, she knew how to relate to him in a different way than Hermione and Ron. She'd been the one to really help him through the grieving process after losing Sirius because she knew exactly what he was going through, the thoughts that were going through his head. Because she knew what it was like to lose someone like that.

And yet, sometimes, she still found ways to baffle him. Like today.

"What are they again?" he asked, his gaze still trained on the glass jar.

"Luminous Fairies," she stated matter-a-factly.

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Luminous Fairies?"

She nodded. "They're very rare. Daddy found them during his trek through the Netherlands a few months back and sent them to me." She glanced through the side of her jar. "They're very hard to see in daylight as a form of protection, but they glow pretty colors at night."

Harry followed her lead, peering back into his own jar. "So, if they're so rare, why are you letting them go? I'd think you'd want to keep them."

"Well, that's not really fair, is it?"

"It's not?"

"No," she replied with a shake of her head. "They're beautiful creatures at night, but it doesn't seem fair to keep them bottled up for my own enjoyment."

Only at that moment did Harry have a thought. "How do they even breathe in here?"

"They don't have to have oxygen to live," she replied as if this should have been common knowledge.

"Oh," he replied, glancing at her. "That makes...sense?"

Luna smiled over at him. "It'd be rude of me to keep them in a jar if they needed oxygen, Harry."

Harry returned the smile with a slight laugh. "Yeah, I guess it would be."

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, watching the sun set into the horizon. Only when the sun had finally set into the darkened sky did Luna finally speak.

"Like clockwork," she said dreamily.

Harry turned to look at her, and blinked at what he saw. She was holding her jar up again, and inside the glass container fluttered streaks of colors. Purples. Whites. Blues. All zipping around the jar, leaving colored trails as they flew about. Amazed, he turned to his own jar, and sure enough, colors darted around inside his as well.

Luna stood, dusting off her skirt with her free hand. She smiled at the jar, her hand unscrewing the lid. "You were a very nice gift," she said to the jar as she removed the lid and the colors fluttered out of the jar and into the air.

She turned her gaze on him, and Harry finally stood. He watched the colors swirl inside the jar for a moment longer, still amazed that only minutes before, he would have sworn he had been staring into an empty jar. He unscrewed his lid and watched as the colors darted out.

He stood silently beside Luna, smiling softly, as he watched the fairies zip around. His gaze didn't leave the sky until the fairies disappeared into the stars.

"They'll be much happier," Luna said from his side. He turned to her as she continued. "Life in a jar couldn't have been much fun."

"No, I guess not," he replied, replacing his lid onto his jar. He handed Luna her jar back, and she took it from his hands with that familiar wisp of a smile.

"Thanks for sitting out here with me."

He shrugged his shoulders, retrieving his school robe from the grass and shaking the dust from it. "No problem," he replied with a slight smile.

They stood in silence for a moment, watching each other, before Harry finally found his voice again. "So Luminous Fairies, huh?"

Luna nodded as they started back towards the castle. He walked alongside her, smiling, as she told him of all the different fairy types there were. He draped his school robe around her shoulders as she talked, and she paused in her story long enough to give him a warm smile of acknowledgment. Harry returned the smile as she picked up where she had left off.

Sometimes, Harry wondered how he ended up in these situations.


End file.
